“Wow…” the newbie dropped themselves down on the ground, near the bank of the lake. They were very extremely tired as they had to swim through the big lake and avoid the obtascles under it. After a while lying powerlessly and panting, they finally could talk again.

“Congratulation!” SunHwa and Zinger gave them around of applause while walking towards them. “Believe me! Whatever you have just gone through, we had to do much harder last time!” they helped the youngers to stand up while reminding them that those challenges weren’t nothing much.

“The water is cool, isn’t it?” YoungJae teased after helping AhSeung to get up.

“COOL? We’re cold to death!” HyunAe yelled at him and hurriedly looked for her backpack. She needed to change her clothes right away or else she would catch a cold. Without waiting for YongGuk to give it, she just snatched it and rummaged inside to find the towel. Her wallet dropped out and because of the strong force of falling down from the high, it opened automatically, revealing a small photo inside. Zelo leaned down to pick his bag up and saw it. He held the wallet in his hand and stared at the photo.

MinHee also saw it. She enlarged both of her eyes and uttered, “This photo…”

“Why did you steal my picture? I told you not to touch my properties!” Zelo turned to HyunAe and blamed her for touching his private belongings.

“What do you mean?” HyunAe grabbed the wallet back. “This is my wallet!”

“Then what the picture is?” Zelo pointed at the wallet and kept staring at it.

“It’s also mine!” HyunAe took the photo out of the wallet. Zelo also rummaged his bag for his wallet and opened it, he saw his photo was still there. “But…”

HyunAe looked at the photo of Zelo and looked at the one in her hands, then moved her eyes to his photo and moved them back to hers. Then they exchanged surprising looks. HyunAe blinked her eyes and stuttered, “Jun… JunHong… JunHong ah…”

Zelo also blinked his eyes repeatedly as he didn’t understand what was happening. HyunAe closed her eyes quickly and a tear dropped down. It was hard for her to hold in her emotions. She didn’t know what to do or what to say. Her stomach felt really strange.

“What’s going on?” the others whispered asking to one another but no one knew. They looked at YongGuk to see if he had any idea but he also shrugged his shoulders.

“You’re my lost brother!” HyunAe said with choky voice. The sentence couldn’t be heard completely because there was something stuck in , something like a big flock of happiness and missing wanted to stream out from her heart but it was much bigger than so it was stuck.

She swallowed hard to clear her voice and claimed again, “You’re my lost brother, Zelo! Your real name is JunHong, Choi JunHong! Look at this!” She pointed at the two children in the photo, “This is you and this is me. I’m your sister!”

Zelo stuck his eyes to the faces of the children and a teardrop ran down his cheek, “Noona…”

HyunAe quickly dashed towards, jumped on him and hugged him. “JunHong ah, noona is here!” He squeezed her in his embrace and they were sobbing for a while.

 =====================================POISON28==================================

The sister and brother sat down on the couch, drinking hot chocolate and talking a lot after dinner. The others kept being around to congrate them on finding each other and finally, Zelo found himself. The whole three-house became very warm, full of laughters and happy talks.

YongGuk leaned his back to the corner of the wall and looked out at the crowd in the middle of the living room. He fetched out a deep sigh and looked out over at the deep and dark forest. His mind now was even bushier than the forest. Just like HyunAe was hiding him the secret about AhSeung, he was also hiding her a big secret. And his secret was even bigger than the one she hid from him because it was related to her family, to Zelo, to her.

“Noona… Why did we lose each other?” Zelo asked while lying on her thighs, enjoying the feeling of having a sibling, a family.

HyunAe rubbed his head slightly and said, “I don’t remember too… We were still very young. I only remember you and a very strange feeling that night before we fell asleep thanks to our mother’s lullaby. Then when I woke up, I didn’t see you. I didn’t see our parents either. I just see the King and the Viceroy. They brought me to the Castle and started calling me Princess… Since then, they became my family.” She stopped playing with his hair and tentatively looked at the air.

YongGuk heaved out another sigh and cleared his throat. The tragic reminiscene filled his lung. He felt suffocated and hurt. But he knew that what he felt couldn’t be compared to what they would feel when they know the truth.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I’M REALLY CRAZY!” YoungJae’s sudden scream startled everybody.

“What happens?” DaeHyun immediately appeared next to him to check if he was okay.

“What’s up?” Zinger ran to them in panic. She thought there must have been something really terrible so YoungJae would be like that.

“I forgot to read the map! Can you believe that? We’ve been here for a week and I forgot to take a look at it!” YoungJae shouted out and ruffled his hair crazily.

“Aigoo…” everybody sighed in relief. They thought there was something really emergency. Their hearts were about to stop when they heard his scream because he usually was the calmest person so he would only scream when something really really really bad happened.

“Yah! Are you crazy?” SunHwa twisted his ear and gnashed her teeth asking him with a mad voice.

“Ah ah… Noona it’s hurt!” YoungJae rubbed his ear and whined with his face frowned.

“Who allows you to call me noona?” SunHwa patted his head.

“Argh…” he held his head and duck away to avoid another hit from Zinger. “Don’t ever do that again or we’ll throw you over that window!” Zinger threated him with her eyes flipping.

“Do we have to wait for the next time? I want to throw him now! Aish jinja…” DaeHyun rolled his eyes at his bestfriend, who was sometimes not normal at all. Then they left him alone on the table and turned back to the living room with the others.

HyunAe saw YoungJae’s attitude and somehow she could understand the reason a bit. He was being ignored by his partner but didn’t know the reason. He must have been really sad and stressful at the same time. If only she could tell him the truth. But if she did now, AhSeung’s life would be at risk.

 Zelo stretched and yawned, stood straight up and called out for MinHee, “Hee ah! Let’s go to sleep! My battery is dying soon!”

MinHee was learning how to knit a sweater from SunHwa. She hadn’t wanted to go to bed yet but Zelo kept begging so she had to stop and go to sleep early with him.

“I think we should go to bed early too. Tomorrow, we’ll officially receive our main mission!” Zinger told the rest. SunHwa also agreed with her so she nodded and nudged JongUp to go to their room.

As DaeHyun was cleaning his guns attentively, he didn’t hear what Zinger said and didn’t move until Zinger slapped on his back and commanded him to go to bed.

After getting out of the lake, AhSeung caught a cold so she was very ill and stayed on bed. There were only YoungJae, HyunAe and YongGuk at the living room. She wanted to say the truth to them. To only both of them. Maybe they would understand. She was about to say but she promised to AhSeung that she would keep it as a secret to protect her, so she stopped.

Instead of walking towards YoungJae, she dashed to the stairs and got back to her room. YongGuk followed her, with a big anxiety in his heart.

YoungJae sighed out heavily. He was all alone now. So lonely. Burying his head to the antique book and the map, he paid all attention to them to forget how cold and lonely he was at the moment.